Images In Photos May Play Role In Wesleyan Bomb Trial

MIDDLETOWN — The first photo depicts a defiant Kofi Taha dressed in black and raising a clenched fist at the 1989 inauguration of Wesleyan University President William C. Chace.

A second shows Taha and several other black students with their heads lowered, standing side by side in front of the podium as the new president spoke.

The question for jurors to decide: Were the student activists part of a peaceful protest or were they planting the seeds for a more destructive demonstration on April 7, 1990, when Chace's office was firebombed?

The photographs were entered into evidence Wednesday in Superior Court before Deputy Assistant State's Attorney Russell C. Zentner rested his case in the firebombing trial of Taha.

Zentner is trying to prove that Taha threw three Molotov cocktails into Chace's office as part of a protest against the president's policies on minority affairs. He said the photographs showed that Taha was a strident student who would disrupt the president's inauguration and ultimately firebomb his office to achieve his goals.

Taha's attorney, Sue Wise, submitted the second photo, and said it depicts just the opposite -- that her client supported peaceful protest, not violence.

Taha, now a student at Columbia University in Manhattan, was a central figure in campus protests in spring 1990; he took part in a student sit-in at the admissions office and was co-editor of a black students' newspaper that challenged the administration on its support for minorities.

Taha, 22, of the Bronx, N.Y., is facing firebombing and arson charges. He is the only one of a group of students and Middletown teenagers allegedly involved in the firebombing -- some only peripherally -- to go to trial. Taha says he was in New York when the firebombing occurred.

A Wesleyan sophomore, Nicholas Haddad, considered the mastermind behind the firebombing, was killed in summer 1990 in a

drug-related shooting in Hartford. Sudhama Ranganathan, 20, son of a former professor, has pleaded guilty to state and federal charges, and testified against Taha.

In eight days of trial before Judge Patrick Clifford, three city teenagers and another student have testified about Taha's alleged involvement in the firebombing. Ranganathan told the jury that Taha helped plan the firebombing and that he threw the Molotov cocktails.

Marcus Mickens, a childhood friend of Ranganathan, and a Wesleyan student, Nichole Harmon, testified that Taha asked them to act as a "lookout" by posing as a couple near the Olin Library. Mickens said he saw someone who looked like Taha run from the president's office after the firebombing.

LeVaughan Hicks, also a friend of Ranganathan, said that he picked up Taha at the campus tennis courts early on the morning of April 7 and drove Taha to Wadsworth Falls. He said his car smelled of gasoline after Taha got inside.

When he asked what was going on, Taha didn't answer his question and told him to drive, Hicks testified.

Through her cross-examination, Wise tried to show that the state's witnesses shouldn't be believed because they were testifying to escape prosecution. For example, Wise brought out that Mickens had a drug case pending that could be affected by his testimony.

Harmon, Mickens and Hicks were not prosecuted in connection with the case. Harmon went before the university's student judiciary and was found not guilty.

Wise began presenting witnesses in the defense's case Wednesday. Testimony is scheduled to continue today at 10 a.m. Taha is free on $25,000 bond